All posts by Robert

latest, Photos

Cypress Riding Jan 4

20090104_cypress_van-sm

Looking over my right shoulder on the way up the lift this morning I could see Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands in the background. The trees in Stanley Park are the only indication the city is down there – somewhere underneath the cloud cover.

We knew right away it was going to be a busy day on the hill – arriving at 9am the upper lot was already full, which is quite unusual, even with an 8 am opening.

20090104_cypress_blackmtn-sm
It was snowing and significantly cooler – with a crisp wind blowing down the face of Mt. Strachan as we rode the left. Wind in the face up means wind on our back coming down, so that’s not so bad.

Seemed to us to be the busiest day on the hill so far this season – probably the allure of 50 plus cm’s of new snow and decent driving conditions in Vancouver for the first time in days. Usually when it gets busy we’ll hit Midway chair to avoid the lineups, but it and Skychair were closed today – probably because of the wind.

20090104_cypress_gb-sm

I can’t say I like Cypress’s new system of checking passes and tickets in the lift lines instead of at an entry gate. It means digging my pass out from inside my jacket which usually means taking off my gloves and fumbling with my zipper, then having to get things back together again. Not a big deal but a bit of a nuisance, especially since the zipper toggle on my jacket it broken. Hmmm, wonder if that’s a good enough reason to get a new one …

The conditions were spectacular – so much snow it just brings a big smile to your face.

20090104_cypress_matt-sm

Usually when we head home, we leave the snow behind, driving down into the dull greens of a Vancouver winter. This week however, we’re heading home to a snow filled driveway. Very odd indeed.

The only disappointment of the day is the new Cypress Creek Grill Dining Room in the new lodge. The building in beautiful and huge, but the food is only just so-so, way overpriced, and the lineups to get food and then pay are  long and slow.

We’ll be packing a lunch from now on.

latest

Snow Bunnies

1 Comment

20090103_snowbunny_opener

Vancouverites are turning into Snow Bunnies.

Who knew.

While most Canadians take winter snow flurries in stride, the white stuff makes BC South Coast dwellers a little crazy.

Usually it only lasts a few days, so we cope – using tennis rackets and kayak paddles to shovel our cars out of the fluffy stuff.

With another dump of snow today, we’re just going to have to get the hang of this.

Yesterday, I stopped to help a guy in a fancy BMW with super cool low aspect tires. I couldn’t leave him there – he was chipping away at the ice under his tires using a window scraper.

When I told him I had a shovel in the snow eating Yaris he lit up like a kid at Christmas. In fact, all he needed was a little push since. When I asked him if he got any traction with his tires, he didn’t even hestitate, ‘None’ he said. All the more reason to be out driving around I guess.

20090103_front_yard-sm

Here in my snowbound ‘hood things are looking surprisingly like Winnipeg. EB and I walked around the neighbourhood, the familiar crunching sound under our boots, as big fat flakes continued to fall gracefully on the crescent.

The boys and I will head up to Cypress for some early morning riding in the powder, while EB takes the bus to Richmond to teach at the Gateway.

Since she’s going that way, we’ll send some munchies along to feed the ‘real’ snow bunnies near the Minoru Chapel.

We’ll get the hang of this winter thing yet…

20090103_tree-sm


ps: you can see more Minoru bunnies at Flickr.

latest

Riding in the New Year

20090101_cypress_2-sm

While the rest of the household was sleeping, I packed my gear and headed up to Cypress for the first run of 09.   It was snowing when I left North Vancouver, Starbucks wasn’t even open, but the promise of fresh powder fueled me just fine on the trip up Cypress Bowl road.

Starting the year in knee deep powder riding a freshly waxed snowboard is as good as it gets.

If the rest of the year unfolds as well – it should be a good 009

20090101_cypress_1-sm

latest

Ozzie the Snow Cat

Our cat Ozzie has mixed feelings about the snow.

But today, when the boys found him playing in the tunnel they made in their snow fort, they decided to make some tunnels for Ozzie.

Now he’s popping up all over the front yard…

Get the Flash Player to see this content.

(also available on YouTube if you want to embed the file)

latest

Snowy Christmas West Coast Style

It’s been a wild couple of days here in Vancouver.

For starters, we already had about 15 cm of snow on the ground, then got another dump on Christmas Eve – somewhere around 20 or 30 cm depending on what part of town you live in.

MB and I were on Cypress Mountain first thing Christmas Eve – the powder was up to my knees and super light so we had a riot. After 5 runs I was exhausted and we headed home, then off to the Playhouse to see a matinee of the Drowsy Chaperone.

While out shoveling the driveway, we managed to catch some video of our neighbour’s way of dealing with the snow…

Get the Flash Player to see this content.

(the video is also on YouTube if you want to link or embed that version)

By early evening there was even more snow on the ground, and while out buying milk in Edgemont Village I passed a couple on a snowmobile driving down the middle of Sunset Boulevard – a sight you won’t see too often in North Vancouver.

Christmas Eve is pretty quiet at our house – we were all curled up watching a movie when the power went out around 10:00 pm . By Christmas morning the power was still off so I fired up my Y2K generator (who’s laughing now !) and we got the fridge and freezer powered up. And of course the coffee maker.

With the indoor temperature about the same as the temperature outside, it wasn’t hard to convince the kids to gear up and play in the snow. I did a run to the closest gas station with power and fueled up the genny.

By 10:30 Christmas morning the grid was back up – so time for a little blogging and another pot of coffee.

This will be one Christmas etched in our memories for a while.

Merry Christmas everyone.

(click any pics for larger versions)

20081224_cypress_midway-sm

20081224_snow_ball-sm

20081225_angel-sm

20081225_yard-sm

latest

My Canada

It’s snowing again tonight in Vancouver, with a snowfall warning for the south coast and a few other parts of BC. In fact, there’s a weather warning of some kind for almost all parts of BC tonight and tomorrow.

And though this is a big country, we all share one thing in common.

A quick check with the Environment Canada web site gives you a good picture of what Winter in Canada means for all Canadians…

20081220_weather

Snow in BC,

latest, Photos

Meanwhile Down Under

It’s white with snow all over the lower mainland, and that makes for a lovely break from the grey.

After a morning of snowboarding I started going through some photos I took in Sydney a few years ago.

Maybe because my sailboat Madsu is tucked away out of the water and undercover for the winter, two photos jumped out at me.

A couple of examples of the ultimate in waterfront living…

  • Steps to the ocean
  • Pool
  • Dry dock

Click the pics for larger versions, if you can stand it…

20081214_boatstorage-sm

It’s one thing to haul up that nice little runabout.

But get a load of this ketch.

20081214_boatstorage2-sm

Gotta love those Sydneysiders.

Both of these were taken in November 2002.

latest

Local Snowboarding Cranking

3 Comments

20081214_cypress_1-sm

Garnet and I got up early so we could head up to Cypress this morning for the opening of the riding season.

Guest Services and lift ticketing is now at the new lodge, and it’s a fantastic facility. For one thing it’s more centrally located to the lifts, and the ticketing area is under-cover & huge compared to the old guest services building.

20081214_cypress_3-sm

The wind was blowing and the snow falling this morning, it was surprisingly cold – but first day on the mountain it really doesn’t matter.

Not many of the runs are open yet – check the Cypress Mountain web site for info – they were selling lift tickets at a reduced rate today.

20081214_tireThis was the perfect day to find out how the new Michelin X-Ice snow tires are going to perform. The road was slippery and with fresh snow falling it was a great test for the Yaris.

Verdict = way better than I had expected.

Tire technology just gets better and better and the Yaris is now a snow-hugging-machine – makes heading up on a cold snowy morning way less stressful.

Happy Riding!  Oh, and check out Garnet’s answer to the cold…

20081214_cypress_day1

latest

Get a Grip

3 Comments

My first stop of the morning pretty much set the tone for the day. I’m telling you – if you have to buy tires for your car or truck or whatever, you should do yourself a favour and get them at Tireland in North Vancouver.

I don’t work for them, don’t even know them personally. I have had outstanding service there before, and these days, that counts for everything.

With the write-off of our Jeep, we’re counting on our fabulous red Yaris to do double duty – the mighty little Toyota is going to be spending many a weekend driving up (and hopefully down) the Cypress Bowl road and we expect nothing but the best performance. I’m going to miss the comfort of 4 wheel drive, but in the absence of the four-by, I want some decent tires underfoot.

So off I went to pick up some brand new Michelin X-ICE XI2 tires – and lucky to get ’em too.

There’s a real shortage of winter tires this year, due to a bunch of different circumstances, including a new law requiring ground grips in the province of Quebec.

As I’ve done before, I called Paul at Tireland on the North Shore yesterday, and he managed to find a set of Michelins for me – the only reason they had any is that we’ve got 14 inch tires on the Yaris instead of the more popular 15’s. But the great thing is Paul searched his stock and what he could get brought in, and had a couple of other recommendations for me, with a lot of information about the pros and cons of each tire and how they could be expected to perform.

The little red car is now equipped with some great winter tires – I had a wonderful start to me day even though I dropped a fair bit of money (hey, interest rates are the lowest they’ve been in 50 years). They thing is, I got amazing service, they took my car in on time and had it out on time, and still gave me a bit of a discount.

Now if we could only get some snow…’cause the local mountains are looking pretty bare.

Media, WordPress

Plug it in Plug it in

Sorry for anyone who was getting “page not found” returns on some of the items on the front page of the blog. I’d installed a new plug-in that was a bigtover-earnest in rewriting URLs.

One of the great things about WordPress is the sheer volume of plug-ins created to provide all sorts of functionality and features. Sometimes they choke, and my fault for not re-checking what was happening after I installed this one.

All’s well and back to normal.

latest

10 Great Things About Prorogation

It’s time to use some glass-half-full logic on this one, ’cause everyone’s talking about it.

Here are, Ten Great Things About Prorogation:

  1. No pithy clips from Question Period on the news
  2. Less junk mail from my Member in Ottawa
  3. Reruns of old versions of The House with Jason Moscovitch
  4. Conservative Store can sell ‘Just Say No to Socialists and Separatists’ merch just in time for Christmas
  5. Finally some room in business class on flights to Ottawa
  6. Honourable Members free to go on even longer shopping sprees
  7. Governor General ticks off one more task on To Do List
  8. Coalition can get a funky logo and theme song made
  9. Steven Harper finally has time to get a picture showing right side of face for website
  10. During break, some clever MP can write “Governing for Dummies”
latest

We’re Number One (repeat)

The latest radio ratings came out this week, and CBC Radio One is congratulating itself for one of its best ratings periods ever.

On closer look though, it seems that, like every other radio station in the world, there’s a fair bit of selective fun with numbers going on.

Here’s the headline from CBC’s official blog:

CBC Radio cleaned up in the latest audience measurement report released by BBM.

In radio they call it the book, and it was an outstanding showing

(You can get also get an overview of the ratings, nation wide, at Broadcaster magazine.)

In Toronto, CBC is high-fiving for becoming “number one” for the first time ever.

CBLAFM are the call letters of Toronto’s CBC flagship – and it scored a 9.4 share in this round or ratings.

BBM defines share as “total hours tuned to that station expressed as a percentage of total hours tuned to all radio” in the market.

That’s great of course, but there are some in the broadcast industry who think very little of share. Mostly because if your listeners keep their radio tuned for long period of times, your share will be higher, even though a competitor may have more listeners.

Most commercial stations look at reach – defined by BBM as “estimated number of different people, within…the market area, who tuned to that station for at least a quarter hour during the week”

In other words, how many people are actually listening.

Within CBC, making Toronto local radio a winner is a huge deal – and for any of my former colleagues who are celebrating this weekend, good on you.

But when you look at CBL’s reach, whether in the central market (i.e. the city) or full coverage (the entire broadcast range), it’s far from number one.

In full coverage reach, CBL comes in 3rd in the 17 stations identify by BBM

And in the central area of Toronto, CBL does less well. With 696,100 listeners, they’re in 5th place.

In Vancouver, it’s a slightly different story, and very different numbers.

Unlike Toronto, CBC Vancouver won’t be using share to claim number one spot – that’s because in share they’re second, well behind CKNW.

What does make Vancouver CBC number one is a great technical infrastructure. Their full coverage reach is an awesome 612,400 listeners, thanks to excellent transmitter coverage across the lower mainland. This is miles ahead of their closest competitor – and their closest full coverage reach competitor isn’t news/talk station CKNW, but CFBTFM – better known to you as The Beat.

When it comes to the Vancouver central area however, the numbers go quite differently, with CBC well behind CKNW, CFBTFM, CHQM and are on par with CKZZ.

In Vancouver central, CBC Radio One is actually 4th.

What does it all mean ?

Externally, nothing really.

CBC Radio doesn’t currently sell advertising so they can claim #1 all they want, but when the radio sales teams from private stations hit the street to sell, CBC isn’t even on their chart.

Internally – it means everything, particularly as CBC eyes the current government cuts with apprehension.

You just had to listen to Heritage Minister James Moore interviewed on CBC Vancouver this week to hear how big a concern it is for CBC. Speaking to him about the government’s financial plan, on no other question did they push him for an answer except for one – will CBC be getting cut. When minister Moore didn’t answer the question directly, they went on to ask it 2 more times.

The other issue for CBC surrounds CBC Radio Two. With massive changes to the schedule last fall, the ratings are not looking good. So having a great story to tell about CBC Radio One will go a long way to deflecting the heat on Radio Two’s poor performance.

—-

The full BBM highlights are online and summary level information is a free PDF dowload, so have a look and make your own charts and graphs to show how your station in #1, in something.

I’ve got a couple of other charts you can take a look at. Like those above, click for a larger version.

latest

Jobs For Tough Times

One thing about tough economic times, you’ve really got to open your mind to new and different opportunities.

Fortunately, tough economic times tend to surface loads of off-the-beaten-track jobs, just there for the taking. What ever would we do without the internet…

When Times Get Tough, The Rich Call the Butler

Forget about trying to become a millionaire – learn how to serve one.

If you’re Canadian, apparently your butlering skills are highly in demand with the world’s rich and elite.

The web site is a bit short on detail and long on hyperbole, but a career as a butler, serving the rich and famous, might be just for you.

Makes deciding on what to wear in the morning a piece of cake.

www.butlersofcanada.com

When Times Get Tough, More People are Walking

And those people need shoes.

Shoe Warehouse heads its Craigslist ad with “Looming Recession Got You Thinking?”.

Your answer might be “Sure, but not about shoes”.

But remember – tough times means opening yourself up to new opportunities. But be warned, one of the main job requirements is “MUST be able to take direction and complete tasks within a specified time frame”.

Hmmm. I always thought that’s what JOB meant ?

When Times Get Tough, Head to the Bar

If I had known I could buy a pub for less than the price of a house in Vancouver, I’d have so been there.

Who knew ? I think I’d be great behind one of those long hardwood bars, drawing a nice dark ale for the locals and maybe leading in a few great Canadian drinking songs.

Those of you who know me, know how right this would be.

When Times Get Tough, Aim for a Unique Job

Baby Associate, Diener, or any one of these 37 occupations.

When Times Get Tough, You Can Always Count on Bad News

CTV just laid off over a hundred people, but CBC’s hiring.

Not only that, they’re looking to fill a fresh new vacancy. After just over a year in the job, John Cruikshank is leaving as head of news. He’s been appointed publisher of the Toronto Star starting Jan 1.

If managing a bunch of hard-core journalists and bossing Peter Mansbridge around doesn’t do it for you, there are 42 other jobs open at CBC as of today, so take your pick.

latest

Twitter In But Not Out

Twitter has run up against the great Canadian mobile phone reality. Even something as simple as text messaging is messed up here.

GigaOm has the skinny – basically Twitter can’t afford the Canadian carriers’ text costs – so while you’ll still be able to send your messages to Twitter – no more outbound from Twitter to Canadian mobile device…

Unexpected changes in our billing have forced us into a difficult situation with our Canadian SMS service. We can’t afford to support this service given our current arrangement with our providers (where costs have been doubling for the past several months.) As a result, effective today we are no longer delivering outbound SMS over our Canadian shortcode (21212). The ability to update Twitter over SMS will still be supported over 21212. But we know that this is only part of the experience and we want to make Twitter work in the way folks want … regardless of where they live. There is a realistic, scalable SMS solution for Canada (and the rest of the world.) We’re working on that and will post more details on the Twitter blog as we make progress

more at GigaOm

For us Canadians, this takes away one of Twitter’s most powerful aspects – live-in-situ updates – whether that’s at a party, conference or just a sunny day at the beach. We’ll still be able to Twitter about it with our phone, but the only ones who’ll receive them will have to be on a browser.

Which begs the question.

If a Tweet falls in the Canadian Forest – does anybody hear ?